Congress has debated this year whether taxpayers should provide a half-billion dollars for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (which in turn, funds PBS and NPR). House Republicans proposed on September 29 that the federal funding for CPB should end. Fiscally, it’s an obviously non-essential expense in an era of trillion-dollar deficits – not to mention hundreds of programming choices on cable TV, the Internet, and satellite radio. But there is another reason for defunding: the absolute refusal of the taxpayer-subsidized public-broadcasting empire to attempt balance and objectivity in all “programming of a controversial nature,” as it says in the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. Instead, PBS and NPR programmers continue to lurch hard to port to please liberal Democrats and radical-left activists.

To underline how dramatically PBS and NPR have tried to shift the American political discussion to the left, Media Research Center analysts have assembled a list of the 20 most obnoxiously biased stories or statements from public broadcasting stars and stories over the last 25 years, including this top-ten list (click here for PDF):

Unlike NPR’s unceremonious firing of Juan Williams last year, none of these offenses ever resulted in punishment. In exchange for the long-standing tilt of public broadcasting, liberal politicians have reliably voted and lobbied for CPB funding increases, and liberal activists have rallied to “save” their subsidies. In the discussion over defunding CPB since the dramatic Republican landslide in the House in 2010, PBS has worked hand in glove and explicitly thanked the hard-left activists of MoveOn.org and FreePress against a defunding push from conservatives.

The MRC analysis concludes that because of its taxpayer subsidies and ideological stance in opposition to commercial TV and radio, it’s natural that public broadcasting would become a liberal playground. Careful analysis of PBS and NPR content from news executives or CPB officials could offset this tilt. But all the evidence since Congress acted in 1967 shows the idea of any official seeking balance is strictly forbidden. Instead, long-standing CPB policy holds that Congress should be ignored and walled off from raising any objections about bias. Defunding CPB would not stop liberal bias, but it would stop the outrage of conservatives (and Americans in general) being forced to fund fervent attacks on them with their own taxpayer dollars.